Negotiations on Economic Recovery Plan Discussed on Fox News

... governor sarah palin. brian: they're aging well. steve: let's talk stimulus. the back and forth over the stimulus has begun, so will house and senate democrats continue to butt heads over the details of the bill, and how soon can a compromise be reached? as soon as they have a compromise, they put it in front of the president, he gets out a pen, and he signs it. alisyn: joining us is steny hoyer. as we understand it -- well, actually before i get to a question, let us play for you a little sound we've been playing for our audience this morning on what chuck schumer said about how the american people feel about so called pork projects that might be involved in the bill. take a listen. >> and let me say this. to all of the chattering class that so much focuses on those little tiny, yes, porky amendments, the american people really don't care. alisyn: is that right? do the american people really not care about pork? >> no, i think american people do care, but i think chuck's point was that too often we focus on the minutia as opposed to the big picture and the impact that we're trying to have on the economy in this particular instance or the impact of other bills are very substantial, but unfortunately too often tiny little elements of them are the focus of the press and the public, but i think that his point was accurate, but the fact is that you and i both know that these little pork projects do garner a lot of attention and a lot of anger, particularly when they're like the bridge to nowhere that clearly was unjustified and shouldn't have been in there. brian: from way back then made famous. republicans, the three you have in the senate, say it is no good, they will withdraw their support if the house restores the $100 billion they claim they cut from this project. if they have -- if they are hard and fast on that decision, is the house going to back off? >> it's interesting. the senate bill was $20 billion more than the house bill. about 840-820. in fact, therefore, the senate bill spent more money than the house bill. in addition to that, the senate bill has the unfortunate status of creating less jobs than the house bill. the whole point of this bill is to create jobs, to get our economy moving, to stabilize the economy, and to grow jobs. we're losing 20,000 jobs a day over the last few months. that's an extraordinary indication of a deep recession that we've got to get out of. the bills are significantly different in some ways, but for the most part, the same. both the senate and the house have passed major bills, about $800 billion, to try to get this economy moving. i'm hopeful and believe that we'll try to come to agreement on the differences that exist and have a bill by the end of the day that both houses can vote on. steve: going to brian's -- talking about the fact that there's three republicans, also a democrat from nebraska, they say that unless the house passes the senate bill pretty much in fact, they're bailing. >> well, i hope that's not the case. the way this process works is we have a house of representatives in the u.s. senate. they both are independent legislators. i'm hopeful that the democratic process will happen. and i think we'll constrain ourselves within bounds that we can garner the requisite votes in the house, but basically what we're going to do is pass a bill that will in fact grow jobs hopefully somewhere in the neighborhood of 3.5 million. alisyn: the major differences are the senate bill included many more tax cuts, $100 billion worth of tax cuts, and less money than the house bill did for the state. how will you ever reconcile those two different philosophies? >> well, there are differences, and we're going to have to reconcile them if we're going to pass legislation, and we believe that passing legislation is critical. we're going to compromise. we believe the states need to have additional resources, so they don't lay off teachers, lay off firefighters, lay off police, and can stabilize their own governments in an era of very deep fall in their revenues. 49 of our states have to have a balanced budget, but we're going to have to resolve those differences obviously if we're going to pass a bill. simply talking about what we ...